In March of 2011 our family had the immense pleasure and privilege of visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem. As faithful Christians we were thrilled to have this opportunity to visit two cities that are holy sites of our faith. Since we were on a cruise we were limited to several choices of tours that the cruise company offered for each port of call. Therefore we were locked into the itinerary already set by the tour company.
I’m sharing all of this to preface my somewhat negative post. Israel is a stunningly beautiful country. Jersualem was absolutely breath taking. However, if we were to go back we would chose a very different itinerary, particularly when it comes to the assumed crucifixion and resurrection site of Jesus.
As it was, the tour guide took us to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I’m no historian, and honestly I don’t need to know exactly where Jesus died and was resurrected–the location is not a very important tenet of my faith. Therefore I won’t get into the accuracy of its location. My concern was and is what was contained within the church.
Here is the outside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I took this photo just as we were about to enter.
We had come to the church after visiting the Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives. Both of these places were really simple yet powerful, and it was rather easy to picture them as they were during the time of Jesus. I had assumed that the (presumed) location of the crucifixion and resurrection would be similar.
Right away I was put off after hearing from our tour guide that control of the church is (and has been for some time now) shared between several Christian churches. The main six churches are the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, the Oriental Orthodox, the Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox, and the Syriac Orthodox. There has been violence erupt many times between the different factions, including a fistfight over a chapel door being left open and hospitalizations following a brawl over a moved chair. Seriously. So suffice it to say, I was already less than impressed by the management.
As we entered the church we were led up a flight of stairs directly to our right to what is the most lavishly decorated part of the church. This is the part of the church that is regarded as the location of Calvary.
I can’t even begin to tell you how much I loathed what I saw here. It was idolatrous. Period.
Here is a close up view of the altar, borrowed from Wikipedia:
There were man made images of Jesus and Mary everywhere. There was gold everywhere. There were ornate lamps everywhere. It was absolutely breath taking, but not in a good way. I wept and I grieved over what I saw there. Our 5 year old became quite distressed in that part of the church so my husband picked him up. When we asked him what was wrong he replied “I don’t like it here. It’s creepy.” That pretty much sums it up, really.
After descending another set of stairs we stopped off at the Stone of the Annointing, the spot where it is claimed that the body of Jesus was prepared for burial according to Jewish tradition. We were encouraged to touch the rock. The tour guide tried to get me to get some of the scented oil and touch it to the baby’s head that he might “receive a blessing”. No, no, no. We do not rely on superstition to receive good gifts from our God. A rock covered in smelly oil is no more able to change my circumstances than a pebble in my driveway.
From there we entered what is called the Rotunda and the Edicule. The Edicule is a chapel within the rotunda that contains two rooms. One room is the presumed tomb itself and the other room contains “the Angel’s Stone” which is a fragment of stone believed to have been part of the stone that would have sealed Jesus’ tomb. This first picture is of the Edicule within the Rotunda.
This next photo is of the entrance to what is believed to be the tomb.
We were not allowed to take photographs at the tomb but it was a shrine built over a cave entrance that you had to kneel down and peer through glass to see. I opted not to do this for lots of reasons. The main one being I had the little one on my chest in a sling. The other being that I was so upset by everything that I was trying to take in that I didn’t even think about looking until the group was preparing to move away.
I was thankful that we left the church after seeing the Edicule. I was grateful to be out in the fresh air and sunshine again. I knew that seeing one of the assumed sites of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection would be emotional….I was just surprised by the reason for my emotion.
As a Reformed Protestant, I believe in a simple yet beautiful Gospel–salvation by grace through faith in a risen Savior. We are called to walk by faith, not by sight (I Cor 5:7). And “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 ESV).
But what I saw in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was things seen. I saw paintings, mosaics, sculptures and carvings of images made by man in an attempt to make God tangible. I just kept recalling the 2nd commandment– “you shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above” (Exodus 20:4a)
We often think of idolatry as pagan worship, but “idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images” (Charles Hodge). J.I. Packer discusses the issue of idolatry and the idea of a jealous God in his book Knowing God. Of the 2nd commandment he says, “there is no room for doubting that the commandment obliges us to dissociate our worship, both in public and in private, from all pictures and statues of Christ, no less than from pictures and statues of his Father”.
Why?
Packer expounds two lines of thought which together explain the importance of stressing and obeying the 2nd commandment. The first is that “images dishonor God, for they obscure his glory”. John Calvin wrote that “a true image of God is not to be found in all the world; and hence….His glory is defiled, and His truth corrupted by the lie, whenever He is set before our eyes in a visible form…..Therefore, to devise any image of God is itself impious; because by this corruption His majesty is adulterated, and He is figured to be other than He is.”
Packer goes on to give two illustrations of this. The first illustration he gives is that of the golden calf (bull-image) made by Aaron to be a visible symbol of the mighty God who had safely and triumphantly brought the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt. “But it is not hard to see that such a symbol in fact insults him,” writes Packer, “for what idea of his moral character, his righteousness, goodness, and patience could one gather from looking at a statue of him as a bull. Thus Aaron’s image hid Jehovah’s glory.” Another, and more controversial illustration, is that of the crucifix. Packer argues that the crucifix conceals the glory of Christ, “for it hides the fact of his deity, his victory on the cross, and his present kingdom”. Packer warns that Christians must be careful to avoid looking at pictures or images of God to show us his glory and move us to worship; “for his glory is precisely what such pictures can never show us”.
This leads into the second thought regarding the importance of obeying the 2nd commandment. “Images mislead us, for they convey false ideas about God. The very inadequacy with which they represent him perverts our thoughts of him and plants in our minds errors of all sorts about his character and will.”
“To make an image of God is to take one’s thoughts of him from a human source, rather than from God himself; and this is precisely what is wrong with image-making.” (J.I. Packer, Knowing God)
As we stood in front of the lavishly decorated altar on the assumed site of Calvary, a lady in our group exclaimed somewhat breathlessly, “isn’t it fantastic?!?!”. I remained repectfully silent, but my heart was crying out “No! It’s rubbish, absolute rubbish compared to the glory of Christ and what he has accomplished”.
No image, no gold, no crucifix, no fine linen, no incense, no oil, no stone, no candle, no beads….NOTHING could possibly capture the absolute glory of Christ. And to try, as Calvin said, is irreverent folly.
God has graciously given us a revelation of himself and we find this revelation in His Word. We do not need to imagine or picture what God is like, for he’s already told us. J.I. Packer writes that “the mind that takes up with images is a mind that has not yet learned to love and attend to God’s Word. Those who look to manmade images, material or mental, to lead them to God are not likely to take any part of his revelation as seriously as they should.”
What I do find fantastic is this, that ”Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philipians 2: 5b-11 ESV).
“The God of the Bible has spoken in his Son. The light of the knowledge of his glory is given to us in the face of Jesus Christ. Do I look habitually to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ as showing me the final truth about the nature and the grace of God? Do I see all the purposes of God as centering upon him?”. (J.I. Packer, Knowing God)
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre spoke nothing of Christ’s poverty……of his humilty…..of his glory.
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